


Guiding Light

by the_bedheaded_league (giantflyingskelesnurtle)



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Depression, Established Relationship, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 08:43:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18688042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giantflyingskelesnurtle/pseuds/the_bedheaded_league
Summary: Holmes' black moods drag him down far within himself, to a dark place no one else can reach. Watson feels utterly helpless, but Holmes needs him more than he realizes.An exploration of Holmes' depression and how it affects the man who loves him most. Just some angsty/fluffy hurt/comfort.





	Guiding Light

**Author's Note:**

> I know people have a lot of different interpretations of Holmes' mental health, but I generally think of him as manic depressive. This is a look into what his depressive downswings would be like for Watson to endure.

One particularly chilly morning in November, I awoke to find the other half of my bed empty. I was quite used to Holmes’ habits of retiring and rising at ungodly hours, but the unruffled sheets on his side informed me that he had not been to bed at all. So he had spent the night awake, then – pacing the living room with his mind racing over some puzzle, no doubt. I stood and dressed, wondering what ineffable problem was bothering him now.I did not see him at all that day, which was also not unusual. He often left the house without telling anyone his whereabouts, and I was quite busy on the town myself. But that night, I once again retired without him – and woke to find his half of the bed utterly undisturbed. 

I rose and left the bedroom without bothering to dress, in only my nightgown, dressing gown, and slippers. “Holmes?” I called out, careful not to raise my voice, lest I wake the rest of the household. There came no response. At this moment, I began to feel uneasy. Missing two nights of sleep was not unprecedented for Holmes, but if he had taken up a case so engrossing as to keep him awake for two days, why wouldn’t he have shared it with me?

I did not find him anywhere in the flat. His coat and shoes were gone, and so I resolved to let the matter be until I saw him again that evening, when I returned from visiting my patients. As I walked through the living room, however, I saw something that made me halt: the settee was ever so slightly disturbed. The pillows resting on it were askew, and had a light indent. When I examined closer, I found a familiar black hair on one of them. 

My heart sank. Holmes  _ had _ slept – but he had slept here, on the settee. Away from me. Had I angered him in the past couple of days? I could not remember any row or disagreement between us. In any case, Holmes was not the sort to give me the cold shoulder when he was upset with me; he was quite verbal about his frustrations. 

A dreadful thought occured to me: perhaps he had fallen once again into one of his black moods – those horrible valleys of anguish his great mind occasionally stumbled upon. I had seen these moods before and knew very well that they could last for days on end, and that nothing in the world could pull him out of it. I had tried, towards the beginning of our friendship, to soothe his tormented brain with brandy, his favorite tobacco, a reading of the newest murders in the paper, or simply my company. He refused everything, and I soon learned that during these spells, his mind spiraled into a dark crevice where no one – not even I – could reach him. I forced myself to simply leave him be during those periods, and I managed to do so until I found him turning back to his habits with the needle to relieve his suffering. I felt sick at the sight of him giving himself higher and higher doses as the days wore on, but I dared not deprive him of whatever comforts – however loathsome – he might find in that darkened place. 

I desperately wanted to remain at home until he returned, but I had several patients to see that day. I left the flat and tried to set aside whatever unease I may have felt about Holmes’ behavior. 

My first two patients were tiresome, but I finished with them quickly enough. My third patient, however, was a man who had fallen suddenly and violently ill. I had been contacted by his wife the day before, and when I arrived at the poor man’s bedroom, I recognized his condition immediately as cholera. I spoke to the man for a few minutes, feigning ignorance, putting off that dreaded moment when I would have to deliver my awful diagnosis. Finally, I braced myself and delivered the terrible news. The man, I told them, had likely less than a week to live. I could not save him, but I could prescribe some pills to make his remaining days less painful. 

The man did not speak, nor did his wife. I expected tears from her, but instead she simply climbed into his bed with its sweat-soaked sheets and curled around him, hugging his body to her as if she might keep him in this world with the strength of her arms alone. He held her back, clearly straining, using what little strength he had left to keep his arms around her. I had diagnosed many patients with fatal verdicts in my time, and although it never became easier, I had grown somewhat numb to the histrionics and desperate pleading of grieving family members. But this… this was worse. This woman knew that the man she loved would soon be ripped away from her, and that she could do nothing to save him, and so she held his warm body while it still breathed. I doubted that she would leave his side for more than a few minutes at a time, until it was over. I promised to return the next day with the pills, knowing full well that my patient might not even survive that long, and left them there, together. 

I blinked away hot tears as I rode home. It was the woman’s acceptance of her own helplessness, I realized, that had torn at my heart so. She had calmly, stoically accepted a terrible truth: that we cannot always save the ones we love.

It was a truth I knew all too well myself, although not one that I had accepted nearly as easily. In the beginning of our friendship, Holmes had seemed to me nigh immortal. He was a god to which I bowed my head and offered up my sweetest fruits and wine, and I thought nothing of my one-sided worship of him. But after I nearly lost him to those wretched falls, after my worship blossomed into love, after three agonizing years of waiting for him to return home to me, I came to accept that he too was mere flesh and blood, and that one day I might lose him permanently.

It could just as easily have been my own husband lying in that bed, emptied of fluids and vomit, clinging weakly to his final days of life. For all my heroics in our adventures, for all that I protect him, there are certain things that I, too, cannot save him from. The thought horrified and exhausted me. I returned to Baker Street haggard and weary, longing for a stiff drink.

I climbed the steps to our rooms and paused – the flat was frigid. I could hear no crackling of the fireplace. I hung my coat and hat on the coat rack, and noticed that Holmes’ coat had returned to its place. I entered the sitting room which, for a moment, seemed empty. Then I discovered his thin shape sitting on the floor, slumped against the far wall. 

Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. His face was pale and blank, and although his eyes were open, they clearly saw nothing before them. His clothing and hair were disheveled, and his lips were dry and chapped.

My knees began to tremble. I dropped my bag and cane onto the floor and walked quickly over to kneel by him. He did not turn to look at me. I reached out a hand to grab his wrist, to see if his heart still beat – but I recoiled, realizing that my touch might be unwelcome. I longed, I ached, to gather him up into my arms, but I recalled that during these black moods, he tended to reject all human contact as if it pained him… even my own. I held back and tried to steady my breathing.

“Holmes,” I said, softly, as if the slightest noise might shatter him. “My dear, is there anything you want?”

He turned towards me, apparently surprised. I had not offered him help in this way for years. He shook his head without speaking. 

“A cup of tea,” I said, a note of pleading in my voice. “A glass of brandy. Your pipe, your scrapbook, your violin – anything.”

He shook his head again and attempted to summon a smile to his face. “No, Watson, I do not require anything just now. You needn’t worry over me.” 

_ Needn’t worry?  _

My throat constricted as my eyes grew hot with tears. “Please,” I begged him. “Tell me what to do. Tell me how I can help you.” 

His shock soon turned to sadness. He raised a gentle hand to my cheek. “There is nothing you can do at present, dear boy. I’m afraid I am quite past help at the moment. But please, don’t worry.”

“How can I not worry?” Tears streamed down my cheeks, and Holmes’ expression turned to alarm. “I have seen men and women destroyed by misery. I have seen them end their own lives. How can I be sure that you won’t follow that road as well? You don’t know – you have no idea how much I fear that one day I will lose you to these dark tides, that one day I’ll come home to find you already dead–”

“Watson!” Holmes grabbed me by the shoulders. “Watson, my dear, that shall never happen. Banish the thought from your mind.”

“You cannot promise that, Holmes. You are not invincible – we all have a limit. There is only so much pain the mind can take.” I wrapped my fingers around his arms as tears collected on my chin. “You grow so distant. I watch you, trapped in your own mind, tortured by your own thoughts, and yet I can do nothing to help you. I must sit and watch the man I love suffer as I simply wait, helpless, useless–”

“ _ John. _ ”

The sound of my Christian name broke through my spiraling thoughts. When I wiped the tears from my eyes and looked at Holmes, I saw that his sharp gray eyes were also glistening and red. 

“John, do you really think… do you really believe that you are useless?” he said. “Do you truly believe that you do not help me?”

“I… I’ve never been able free you from your suffering. Nothing I offer you helps in any–”

“Nothing could pull me out of that place, John. I must simply wait until the feeling passes. But you… you make all the difference in the world.”

He took his hands off of my shoulders and cupped my face gently. “You are my guiding light,” he said. “Before I knew you, my struggle to stay afloat felt pointless. And there were… times when I considered simply letting go. Lose myself to those dark tides, as you said. But now I find that I can bear my black moods as well as any other hardship I have faced, because no matter how much it may hurt, and no matter how desperate I feel, I know that you – your warmth, your touch, your love – will be waiting for me at the end of it.” 

I sat for a moment, stunned. When the tears once again began to fall, they were of a different sort. “Always,” I whispered. “I will always be waiting for you, Sherlock. Until the end of my days.” 

His cracked lips curved in a soft smile, and he leaned forward to press a gentle kiss to my lips. “Then you have done more than enough, my love.” 

I clutched his dressing gown and held him close to me as I kissed him again, tasting salt. As he kissed back, my body sagged with relief. I pressed my lips to his cheek, his jawbone, and his neck – pausing to count the steady beats of his pulse. Once I was satisfied with his heartbeat, I pulled him in and held him to my chest; he wrapped his arms around my waist in response. 

“You know, now that you’ve mentioned it,” he said, “I suppose I wouldn’t say no to a glass of brandy.” 

I smiled and nodded – he released me, and I stood. When I returned with a pair of glasses and the decanter, he had grabbed that day’s newspaper from the nearby end table. 

“I’m sure the criminal classes will be just as disappointing today as they were yesterday,” he sighed as I poured the brandy. “I swear, Watson, the villains of London have lost all sense of originality and innovation.” 

“I do hope my stories in the Strand give them some inspiration,” I responded, rolling my eyes. 

“Precisely. Ah, thank you, darling.” He took the glass and held out the paper in its place. “Read to me?” 

I was well aware that he was humoring me, that the brandy and the paper were entirely for my own benefit, and yet I accepted the paper gratefully and began to read aloud. I hardly knew if a single word of it even penetrated his skull – my Holmes has an incredible talent for tuning out all external noise at will – but to simply sit next to him, to feel the solid presence of his body next to me was at that moment all I wanted in the world. 

I eventually left him for supper, and retired to bed alone. Another day passed with little sight of him, but the next night as I waited to doze off in the darkness, I felt Holmes crawl into bed with me. He pressed himself against my back and held me tightly around the waist, pressing a soft kiss to the nape of my neck. 

“Have you made it to the end of it, then?” I murmured to him. 

“It appears so.” Holmes sighed contentedly as I put my hand over his. “And it seems that I’ve reached my prize.” 

He said nothing more. I stayed awake, relishing the feeling of his beautiful warmth curled around me, until at last I felt his breath settle into the peaceful regularity of sleep.


End file.
